| CRM and Firm Management.
Customer Relationship Management Software
Rick writes: "Good interview with HBS professor Susan Fournier: 'Customer relationship management (CRM) programs have become too much about the technology, not enough about the customer relationship.'" [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]
This is at the intersection of Customer Relationship Management and Knowledge Management. CRM would seem to be a subset of KM. In the professional services environment, there is a difference between CRM; using information to focus on the client relationship, and KM; assembling, organizing and disseminating knowledge within the firm.
Pulling the factual information about a contact is easy. Most firms keep track of their actual contacts fairly well. The system begins to break down when we seek to include contacts which do not have an existing relationship with the firm. These are potential clients, potential references, and industry contacts. How do you get lawyers to share their contacts, particularly when these may be a valuable marketing commodity to the individual lawyer? Furthermore, it is the relationship tree that may point out opportunities. How do you incent lawyers to invest in identifying relationships with the multitude of existing contacts?
While the "Aha" moment will work for one lawyer (the beneficiary of the information of others) will that incent the lawyer to invest non-billable time to add the matrix? The recognition of the benefit of using information does not necessarily translate into the motivation to contribute to the Knowledge Bank.
If users do not reciprocate and contribute, the knowledge base will not grow and increase in value. It will decline, fall into disuse and be abandoned. Technology will likely be blamed, but the real culprits are the users (assuming a reasonable design to begin with).
12:08:20 PM 
| 
